Sunday, September 02, 2012

"Apps released by both the
Obama and Romney campaigns have been found to have 'privacy issues.'
From the article: "Experts at GFI Software looked at the Android
versions of both apps, discovering
both to be surprisingly invasive. Obama for America and Mitt's
VP request permissions, access to services and data and capabilities
beyond their core mandate.""

This could be huge! Imagine the
benefits to Intelligence (Oh look, missiles in Cuba. I wonder where
they came from?) or real time military operations (Looks like a whole
passle of Injins over than hill General Custer...)

"Google has been recently
granted a patent
that could not only improve online search but, also will possibly
give the search engine giant an awful lot of information about the
world. Google, through the software, wants to scan and analyze the
content within videos, YouTube videos most probably, and look
for objects in the real world, identify them, and make a
catalogue out of those objects. The patent describes Google's
technology of scanning a video, picking out landmarks, objects and
context; and subsequent tagging and categorization."

Adds reader MojoKid:

"The privacy
implications of such an automated system are enormous.
Facebook's own automatic facial recognition software was highly
controversial when it debuted, and what Google has now patented puts
Facebook to shame. The larger question, unaddressed in this patent,
is whether we want our individual personal data to be tagged, filed,
and logged without permission or choice."

Omer Tene is blogging over on
Concurring Opinions. He has an entry that caught my eye in light of
a recent item about wearing
pixellated masks in public to protect privacy. Omer writes,
in part:

Absent legal
protection, individuals may embrace privacy enhancing technologies
(PETs). One such (admittedly low-tech) PET is a mask. In
a world with ubiquitous facial recognition, more and more people are
likely to wear masks. After all, if a face is like an
http cookie, a mask is like a “do not track” (DNT) header.

You might think
that mask wearing in public will create a “market for lemons” –
only the bad seeds will wear the masks; after all – the rest of us
have “nothing to hide”. Yet as Dan Solove has shown, we need not
have “something to hide” in order to care for our privacy.
Privacy, solitude, freedom from an “unwanted gaze” – reflect a
natural human need; it’s not even strictly human – as cat owners
know, animals sometimes need privacy too.

This only
complicates matters, since it means that the bad seeds will be able
to blend into the mask-wearing crowd. Policymakers may respond by
legislating anti-mask laws. They would reason that
wearing masks in public is different than delivering a DNT signal
online. [How about a “mask” covered in “do not track” labels?
Bob] A mask-bearing individual may intimidate passersby.
(Although this is surely related to existing social norms and might
change as masks become more common). Masks reduce accountability;
but then again, so does online anonymity.

Anti-mask laws, in
turn, may prove to be problematic given their infringement on
religious freedom of, for example, Muslim women. Perhaps an
exemption should be crafted for such purposes then. But who is to
say that privacy is not a legitimate religion? In fact, I have
argued elsewhere that privacy discourse today often takes on a
religious zeal.

We have already seen anti-mask laws in
this country as well as elsewhere. As Joe Coscarelli of the New
York Timesreported
in September 2011, at least five people had been cited for violating
a New York law that bans masks at gatherings of two
or more people unless it’s “a masquerade party or like
entertainment.” A participant in Occupy Lansing (Michigan) was
also reportedly arrested for wearing a mask.

I would argue that the right to wear a
mask flows from the right to anonymous speech, and if all people are
doing are exercising their right to peacefully assemble and make
their point, anti-mask laws should fall to the First Amendment. But
would that argument prevail? In 2004, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeal ruled that New York’s law barring demonstrations from
wearing masks is constitutional and didn’t violate the free speech
rights of Ku Klux Klan members. Significantly, though, the appellate
panel concluded that the mask wasn’t protected by the First
Amendment because the mask doesn’t convey any
message independent of the robe and hood. But if the Guy
Fawkes mask is the only “costume,” and the message is “I am a
member of Anonymous,” would it be protected? Or what if the
message is “I object to the surveillance state we’re becoming?”
Would that make a mask protected speech?

I’d love to hear some First Amendment
experts respond to Omer’s thoughts or this blog entry. I don’t
think arguing that privacy is a religion will gain any traction, but
I do think that to the extent anti-mask laws infringe on the
religious beliefs of some (such as bans on burqas or naqibs), the
laws should be struck down. I doubt they will be because of
anti-Muslim sentiment and because of the foolish “security trumps
privacy” mentality, but in my opinion, they should be struck down.

Academic
researchers have published information on the individuals and groups
who upload torrent files to The Pirate Bay. The data reveals that
most torrent files are first seeded from U.S. connections, with
Comcast and Road Runner being the top Internet providers. The
researchers also reveal the top 100 uploaders to The Pirate Bay along
with their alleged whereabouts.

"In a much anticipated patent
law case, an en banc panel of the Federal Circuit overturned existing
law and came out in favor a new
rule for indirect infringement: you can still be liable for
infringing even if no single person does all the infringement. This
case consolidated two different cases involving internet patents. In
McKesson v. Epic, a lower court found that Epic did not infringe a
patent about a patient portal because one of the steps was performed
by the patient accessing the portal. In Akamai v. Limelight, the
lower court found that Limelight did not infringe because its
customers, not the company itself, tagged content. This is likely
headed for the Supreme Court."

[From the Opinion:

The court should acknowledge that an
all-purpose single-entity requirement is flawed, and restore direct
infringement to its status as occurring when all of
the claimed steps are conducted, whether by a single entity or in
interaction or collaboration.

About time beer got some respect. Wine
is fine for state dinners, but a beer or two for breakfast makes the
whole day mellower...

"Sam Kass, White House
Assistant Chef and the Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food
Initiatives, after much buzz, today released the recipe for White
House Honey Ale and White House Honey Porter, two brews made right on
site at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. According to Kass, the White House
Honey Brown Ale is the first alcohol brewed or distilled on the White
House grounds, as far as they know. "George Washington brewed
beer and distilled whiskey at Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson made
wine but there's no evidence that any beer has been brewed in the
White House. (Although we do know there was some drinking during
prohibition)," Kass wrote in a blog
post.The
recipe can be found here along with a short video 'Inside The
White House Beer Brewing' which shows the brewing in process. Your
tax dollars hard at work yet again!"

"Before you down that pint,
check the shape of your glass—you might be drinking more beer than
you realize. According to a new study of British beer drinkers, an
optical illusion caused by the shape of a curved glass can
dramatically increase the speed at which we swill.
The researchers recruited 160 Brits, and asked them to watch a
nature documentary while they drank beer from straight or curved
glasses. The group drinking a full glass of lager out of curved
flute glasses drank significantly faster than the other
group--possibly because the curved glasses impaired their ability to
pace themselves while drinking."

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About Me

I live in Centennial Colorado. (I'm not actually 100 years old., but I hope to be some day.) I'm an independant computer consultant, specializing in solving problems that traditional IT personnel tend to have difficulty with... That includes everything from inventorying hardware & software, to converting systems & data, to training end-users. I particularly enjoy taking on projects that IT has attempted several times before with no success. I also teach at two local Universities: everything from Introduction to Microcomputers through Business Continuity and Security Management. My background includes IT Audit, Computer Security, and a variety of unique IT projects.